X-ray diffraction allows for nondestructive analysis of a material, revealing information about the crystal structure, chemical composition, and/or physical properties of the material. The technique measures the scattered intensity of an x-ray beam scattered by a sample as a function of incident and scattered angle and wavelength or energy. Advances in hardware and software have improved the analytical capabilities of x-ray diffraction, providing high precision and accuracy in the measurement of interplanar spacings.
Scattering of the x-ray beam due to air surrounding the sample, however, may in some cases lead to excessive background noise in the patterns and cause reduced quality data and/or difficulty in analyzing the collected data. Thus, there exists a need to create an environment for analysis of a sample by x-ray diffraction wherein scattering by air is reduced. There also exists a need to create such an environment in an automated x-ray diffractometer system.